Jan
25
Terrified of another bleak Christmas experience on campus, four of my housemates and I flew over to Paris for a short break.
None of us spoke the language, but we were not bothered as our itinerary was relatively straight-forward: walks around the city centre and visits to museums and Christmas markets. We had the latest edition of Lonely Planet guides to Paris.
What could go wrong?
It was after we exited the Louvre, giddy from the cold, that we started hopping over thigh-high street poles that dotted the Parisian roads. Tan was struggling over a particularly tall one when Wendy crashed into him from behind. When the chaos died down, we realised Wendys glasses had cracked and the lens piece had carved a deep groove just below her left brow.
There was blood all over the place. Panicking, we hailed a taxi. The driver was horrified when he saw Wendys bloody and swollen eye. Throughout the ride, the driver gave us dirty looks and tried to talk to Wendy in fragmented English. It struck us that he was asking if she was in trouble and needed help from the police!
We were a travelling party of four men and a woman; he must have thought that it was more than just an accident!
It took us the entire journey, but thank goodness we managed to convince him in frantic English and butchered French that we were just tourists. In the end, he dropped us off at our hotel (the bleeding had stopped) but left only after talking to the manager who quickly confirmed our story.
Wendys wound left a tiny scar a reminder we should never travel in that 4-1 formation ever again.
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